'I do,' he answered, happy as a boy. 'I am at home. It is perfect.'
'Do you, indeed! You speak as though this story were your own!'
And her laugh was like the tinkle of hare-bells in the wind.
'It is,' he said; 'at least I had--I _have_, rather, a considerable
hand in the making of it.'
'Possibly,' she answered, 'but the story belongs to the person who
first started it. And that person is myself. The story is mine
really!'
'Yours!' he gasped.
'Because--I am the story!'
He stared hard to find the face that said this thing. Thought stopped
dead a moment, blocked by a marvel that was impossible, yet true.
'You mean---?' he stammered.
'You heard perfectly what I said; you understood it, too. There's no
good pretending,' impatience as well as laughter in the little voice.
'I am the story,--the story that you love.'
A sudden joy burst over him in a flood. Struggle and search folded
their wings and slept. An immense happiness wrapped him into the very
woof of the pattern wherein they sat. A thousand loose and ineffective
moods of his life found coherence, as a thousand rambling strands were
gathered home and fastened into place.
And the Pattern quivered and grew brighter.
'I am the story because I thought of it first. You, as a version of
its beauty--a channel for its delivery--belong utterly to me.
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